Position of the Sun (German: Sonnenstand) by German photographer Ursula Schulz-Dornburg was made in 1991-92 in hermit chapels in the Spanish Pyrenees, tracing sunlight's movement through medieval interiors near the route to Santiago de Compostela.
The project examines how architecture converts cosmic movement into measurable time. Schulz-Dornburg used the movement of sunlight through the chapel windows to make the Sun’s changing position across the day and seasons visible inside the architecture. She described the work as conceptual rather than mystical, joining duration and transience to traces of earlier occupants. The chapels' Mozarabic forms situate the series within historical connections among Christian, Islamic, and Jewish cultures. The tenth-century Arabic Calendar of Córdoba provided an intellectual frame for this intercultural and calendrical inquiry.
Narrow bands of sunlight cut across otherwise dark apses, stone or packed-earth floors, walls, and altars, then soften upon those surfaces. Exterior views establish the chapels' forms and setting, while interiors use constrained, recurring viewpoints rather than panoramic description. Chapel name, date, and time identify each black-and-white image. Daily sequences run horizontally in gridded installations, while vertical rows mark seasonal change, turning repeated observations into a visual calendar.
This structure arose from repeated journeys and prolonged waiting across different hours and months. Schulz-Dornburg sometimes lay on the floor from early morning as the sun reached an altar, photographing until it left the interior. Available light governed the exposures, though she occasionally raised dust to make a beam visible. A portfolio format uses black-and-white gelatin silver printing, consistent with her wider analog practice.
Sonnenstand was presented at Galerie Wolfgang Wittrock in Düsseldorf in 1992 alongside the 133-page book Sonnenstand: Acht Kalenderbauten auf dem Weg nach Santiago de Compostela. A bilingual publication followed its 1996 Corcoran Gallery of Art exhibition, with an Art Institute of Chicago presentation in 1997. The project later appeared in IVAM's 2002 survey and became a permanent installation at Stiftung Insel Hombroich in 2004. The Corcoran received the portfolio from the artist in 1998, while Albright-Knox Art Gallery acquired a 17-element San Juan de Busa installation in 2017. It was also included in the Städel Museum's 2018 retrospective, whose catalogue received Paris Photo's Photography Catalogue of the Year award.
